Graduate Alumna Spotlight
Lisa Overholtzer, PhD in 2012
What are you up to now?
I am Associate Professor of Anthropology and William Dawson Chair at McGill University, and I currently serve as the Graduate Program Director (i.e. DGS). These days I do community-collaborative archaeological research at Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala, working to reconstruct early colonial everyday lives at this Indigenous conquistador community. I’m also an academic mama and have two kids and two stepkids. The photo I sent is of a “breastfeeding on pyramids” series I did after noticing how many such photos I had; it’s a nice place to stop and nurse!
What is something you learned in Northwestern Anthropology that helps you today?
The training in grant writing that I received at Northwestern has been essential for my career, not only for successfully funding my own research but also in improving the fellowship success rates of our graduate students here at McGill. Grant writing training at NU was really a team effort. As chair, Bill Leonard led a weekly(!) writing and editing group for our NSF GRF applications. Tim Earle, who wasn’t even on my committee, reached out and offered to help me with my essays. He was blunt with his criticism—told me my personal essay wasn’t personal enough, and to throw it away and start over—and he was right.
What is a favorite memory or story from your time in Northwestern Anthropology?
I served as the graduate student representative on the search that hired Mark Hauser, and what must have been one of the last years that departments conducted long-list interviews in hotel rooms at the AAAs. What a reality check and learning experience that was! Reading and discussing all the applicant files taught me what I needed to do to get my CV in shape for the job market. The AAA interviews were surreal—us awkwardly sitting on the edges on the beds, with the candidate in front of us on a chair, often trembling from nervousness. I’ll never forget Liz, mid-interview, shouting, “Goddamn it, Tim, stop talking over me!” It gave me real insight into gender dynamics in academia, normalized nerves for interviewees, and depersonalized uncomfortable interview dynamics.
Were there any people or classes that were particularly useful for you?
Liz Brumfiel and Cynthia Robin were a supervisor dream team, and every single course they taught (and for which I served as a teaching assistant) had an impact on my own scholarship and teaching. Their co-taught Gender in Archaeology course was especially powerful. Perhaps even more important was the example they set as women running field projects that fostered respectful and safe environments. I was inspired to become a field director myself to help ensure that we aren’t driving women and members of other underrepresented groups away from the discipline of archaeology.
What advice would you give current Northwestern Anthropology students or recent grads?
Take full advantage of Northwestern Anthropology’s 4-field education! Work to better understand the other subfields by TAing those courses, attending talks, making close friends in them, etc. You may one day need to teach an introductory course in another subfield or cross-subfield, but even if you do not, that expertise will open up collaborative possibilities and more importantly, make you a better colleague! More than ever in this time of global turmoil and budget crises, academic departments need to work together, and understanding and valuing each other’s contributions to the discipline helps make unity possible.